Early life Thomas Hannan was born on December 25, 1757, in
Frederick County, Virginia to Thomas Hannan and Lucretia Morris. In 1781, he married Elizabeth Henry.
Military service Hannan first fought in
Lord Dunmore's War at the
Battle of Point Pleasant. At the start of the
American Revolutionary War, he enlisted in the navy for one year. In 1781, several years after his initial term of enlistment, he was drafted into a rifle regiment and served at the
Battle of Yorktown.
Western Virginia settler After the war, Hannan was granted nearly 1,000 acres of land and moved west, becoming the first Anglo settler of
Cabell County, West Virginia (the current location of
Huntington, West Virginia) and one of the earliest settlers of the Kanawha and Ohio River Basin. He forged "Hannan's Trace," one of the original roads to the West from Virginia, the first roadway through what would later become
Mason County, West Virginia and Cabell County, as well as a principal route from western West Virginia and the interior of Ohio. This path linked the then-capital of the
Northwest Territory,
Chillicothe, Ohio, to points in the Eastern United States. Hannan was a friend and neighbor of several other early settlers in the Kanawha Valley region, including
Anne Bailey and
Daniel Boone. == Legacy ==